Population: Young Adults

Young People in Foster Care

MDRC evaluates programs that provide counseling and support to young people who are "aging out" of foster care to help them make the transition to independent adulthood.

The Latest

Lessons from the Implementation of Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP)

Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP) is an initiative to help young people who have been involved in the foster care or juvenile justice systems, or who are homeless. This brief provides details on the models in LEAP and the young people participating, and offers some early implementation findings.

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Issue Focus

Commitment to Building Evidence

STRIVE International engaged MDRC to help the organization improve a new program model aimed at increasing educational attainment and employment of young adults involved in the juvenile justice system. This Issue Focus describes the partnership and offers advice to organizations implementing new programs on how to build evidence of effectiveness.

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Key Documents
Report

Building a Learning Agenda Around Disconnected Youth

Built on a research review and consultation with youth policy experts, this paper makes the case for developing a menu of approaches for the heterogeneous population of disconnected youth, building knowledge about mature programs (to better understand whether they work, for whom, and why), and creating new programs that address areas of unmet need. This framework may be particularly relevant for the Administration’s newly proposed Youth Innovation Fund.

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Brief

After Foster Care and Juvenile Justice

A Preview of the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation

This brief covers one of the largest and most rigorous evaluations of services for youth who are aging out of the foster care and juvenile justice systems. It explains the scope of the problem, summarizes the policy context, describes the program and study sample, and offers preliminary observations from the evaluation.

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Report

Striving for Independence

Two-Year Impact Findings from the Youth Villages Transitional Living Evaluation

This study tested a program that offers individualized services to young people who are making the transition from foster care or juvenile justice custody to independent living. The program had modest, positive effects on earnings, housing stability, and economic well-being and improved some health and safety outcomes.

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